LEGO Icons 10350 Tudor Corner review

The latest LEGO modular building is to Britain what last year’s was to museums, only this time it’s likely to satisfy many more people.

It’s fair to say that 10326 Natural History Museum divided opinions among modular building collectors. Some of us enjoyed its larger-than-life approach to a subject long overdue in the LEGO Icons line-up, while others derided it for still looking too puny for what should be the centrepiece of a city. But for all its perceived faults, there was little arguing that the largest modular building yet hadn’t successfully skewered all the hallmarks of a real-life museum.

10350 Tudor Corner takes that same approach but swaps out a single subject for a location – in this case, the UK. It’s probably the most localised modular building since 2018’s Americana-inspired 10260 Downtown Diner, but that shouldn’t narrow its appeal, because there’s rather a lot to love here…

Release: January 1, 2025 Price: £199.99 / $229.99 / €229.99 Pieces: 3,266 Minifigures: 8 LEGO: Order now

‘Ay up, guv’nor

Presumably conceived by someone who went to the UK, looked around at the architecture and said ‘yes, that’, 10350 Tudor Corner channels so many tropes and trappings of British architecture that it’s tough to know where to look first. But that’s also a consequence of just how chaotic this set is in comparison to its immediate predecessor: where 10326 Natural History Museum is a homogenous slab of olive green and white, 10350 Tudor Corner mashes up a variety of architectural styles and businesses into one building, replicating the approach of (for example) 10312 Jazz Club and 10278 Police Station.

That chaos is exemplified by the fact that this is a colour scheme the LEGO Group has deployed before in 2015’s 10246 Detective’s Office (can you believe that one’s 10 years old now?), only now there are three or four more colours at play on top of light blue and nougat (black, white, dark green and dark red predominantly). It could all have looked so cluttered, busy and confused – but instead, 10350 Tudor Corner builds into a carefully considered blend of British inspirations, demonstrating a keen understanding of colour and never succumbing to the dangers of trying to do too much in one set.

And within all that, 10350 Tudor Corner happily finds new techniques and ways to impress and surprise throughout its extensive and engaging 3,266-piece build.

The stairs leading up to the clockmaker’s workshop come together in a satisfying way; there’s a nice piece of off-grid building to create an angled front to the inn, calling back to similar techniques used in 10297 Boutique Hotel; the Tudor-style top floor is achieved by dropping 2×2 plates with two studs and grill tiles between cheese slopes, then sandwiching them into place without relying on a stud connection; the haberdashery’s signage is bordered by a neat mix of clips and bars; and – perhaps best of all – the front of the inn is patterned with upside-down astromech droid legs.

These are the kinds of details that keep veteran modular building collectors coming back year after year, and preventing fatigue is practically essential 20 sets in – not least because these sets are often rooted in nostalgia for an era of simple brick stacking. Incorporating those moments of genius maintains the pace, flow and all-round engagement during the building process, and 10350 Tudor Corner is certainly not short on them.

Capital interior, sir

On the outside, anyway – but since 2013’s 10243 Parisian Restaurant, the focus for the Modular Buildings Collection has arguably been just as much on the interiors as the exteriors. The good news for those who enjoy that balance is that there’s so much going on inside 10350 Tudor Corner too, to the point that it’s perhaps one of the most densely-packed modular buildings to date.

The Old Guarded Inn, a moniker that nods not-so-subtly back to 1986’s 6067 Guarded Inn, is categorically and undeniably modelled on British pubs, but the LEGO Group has decided to play things vague by placing the focus inside on coffee rather than alcohol (there’s a single bottle element to placate the adults in the room). You do still get a bar at least, and there’s a kitchen around the back for serving up food – including a brick-built plate of bacon and eggs – so everything here not only looks the part, but takes perfect advantage of the small space available.

Next door is the haberdashery, which also makes smart use of limited space with a till, hat rack, umbrella rack, mannequin, and shelves and cabinets of sewing supplies all crammed into its tiny footprint. Where the ground floor is split between the two businesses, though, the upper floors are entirely devoted to a single space. Yet while the external architecture maintains the split, the colour blocking is effective enough that it doesn’t look unusual inside: the clockmaker’s workshop on the first floor combines painted blue walls with exposed brick, while the attic apartment introduces yet another colour into the mix (albeit a rather drab dark grey).

The clockmaker’s workshop is basically clock central (as you’d expect), as the LEGO Group has thrown in pretty much every way possible to build timekeeping devices big and small – credit to the team for never repeating any designs, to be fair – and there’s even a brick-built vacuum cleaner in a cupboard under the stairs, adding a little more life to proceedings.

Go up a level and you’ll find an apartment that would perhaps be the perfect home for 71048 Series 27’s Crazy Cat Lover, containing as it does a cat tree, toys, food bowls and a litter tray. Again, there’s more detail here than you might have expected (perhaps as a result of the increased piece count), from a bookshelf and sofa to an insect collection. The printed tile with a shelf for the tenant’s keys feels a bit out of place when everything else is brick-built, but bonus points for the sunflower lanyard reference.

A clean sweep?

Speaking of printed tiles: absolutely everything in 10350 Tudor Corner is printed. There are no stickers. That’s in-keeping with most modular buildings, but few of them seem to get as many unique printed parts as you’ll find here. There’s also a decent contingent of minifigures with which to populate the set, most of which feel tailored specifically to the British aesthetic and just as carefully considered as the building itself, and all in all it adds up to a package that on paper seems like great value.

That assessment mostly holds up in the flesh, too. This is the largest 32×32-stud building by piece count so far, but costs the same as 10312 Jazz Club and 10297 Boutique Hotel, while we could reasonably have expected the price to increase with one eye on the rest of January 2025’s sets revealed so far – and though price-per-piece isn’t everything, the volume of the finished model feels more than comparable to those sets.

There are a couple of small nitpicks that can’t be overlooked. The pavement is pretty bare for how wide it is, and a little more life there would have been welcome. And the Tudor-style architecture on the top floor would have been nice to see across two floors for three reasons: first, it’s so novel within the Modular Buildings Collection; second, it’s typically what you’d see in England; and third, we’ve already seen plenty of examples of masonry brick walls across other modular buildings, so it’s that half of the first floor where 10350 Tudor Corner doesn’t feel quite as fresh as elsewhere.

The Tudor construction does command a greater internal footprint though, which would have reduced the available floor space in the workshop while also pushing the part count even higher, so it’s not difficult to see why the LEGO Group went in this particular direction. And as mentioned up top, the set doesn’t exactly suffer for subbing in yet another architectural style.

That’s the real beauty of 10350 Tudor Corner, then: that it manages to smash together so many different colours and styles while still creating something visually cohesive. It’s been done time and again under this subtheme and yet is still not something to be taken for granted, but ensures that the 20th LEGO modular building should resonate with newcomers and veterans alike – no matter where you are in the world…

Our honest opinion: An ambitious but ultimately accomplished LEGO modular building that carves out its own identity to serve up something new and fresh 20 sets in. It might just be your new favourite…

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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